By Ezra
Robert Farley does a bang-up job of, well, banging up domino theory today, and I'm glad to see him doing it. From Ben Stein's insane editorials after Deep Throat revealed himself to Peggy Noonan's odd pivot at the end of the first chapter of her memoirs, the essential rightness of domino theory keeps popping up among right-wing "intellectuals" as proof of the left's basic naiveté and idiocy. It shouldn't. Domino theory is the sort of supratheory used as trump card by those who want to justify war when the conflict itself is unjustified. It also, helpfully, lets them argue for indefinite warfare, even when our continued presence would render our immediate objectives harder to attain and do enormous damage to us, our enemies, and all civilians unlucky enough to become collateral. That's the sort of theory that deserves extra-super-special scrutiny and domino theory, as it stands, doesn't hold up.
The threat in domino theory, of course, was that American weakness anywhere would embolden our enemies everywhere. Proponents of it think that's what happened in Vietnam. It isn't. But now, those same, completely incorrect folks folks have gotten us into the domino theory downside in Iraq. Well done!
